The Perfect Seduction

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he challenged her as he deliberately blocked her way.

‘To catch a bus,’ she replied simply.

‘I’ve already told you, I’ll drive you home.’

Bobbie toyed briefly with the idea of not just defying him but also of actively pushing her way past him, but as her eyes met his she read a warning in them that she would be very foolish to try to do so. It was a rather odd sensation to be aware of being so femininely vulnerable and powerless as she had lost count of the number of men over the years who had made jokey and not-so-jokey remarks to her about not wanting to get on her bad side, hinting that because of her height she was somehow less emotionally a woman than her shorter sisters.

In a face to face confrontation with Luke, she was all too likely to come off the loser, she recognised, and he certainly had no inhibitions at all about getting on her wrong side. Silently she turned round and walked back to the car.

‘So Sam is your twin sister,’ Luke commented once they were both in the car and he had driven out of the car park. ‘Have you any other family?’

‘Why the sudden interest in my family?’ Bobbie asked him.

‘Perhaps because I’m curious to know the reason for your interest in mine,’ Luke returned silkily.

Bobbie bit her lip. She had walked straight into that one.

‘I have a brother. My parents are both alive and so is my grandfather on my mother’s side. And although both my parents were only children, their parents came from large families, so we have any number of great-aunts and uncles as well as a whole string of second and third cousins.’

‘Twins are normally very close,’ Luke commented. ‘Are you and your sister?’

‘Yes,’ Bobbie affirmed curtly.

‘You must miss her.’

‘Yes. I do.’

‘Presumably she couldn’t come with you?’

‘No, she couldn’t,’ Bobbie responded in a tone of voice that indicated she didn’t want to answer any more questions, but Luke refused to take the hint.

‘Why was that?’ he pressed.

‘She had other commitments,’ Bobbie told him repressively, turning her head to look out of the window into the darkness as an added signal that she didn’t want him to keep interrogating her. So far as she was concerned, her sister was not a subject she wanted to discuss with him.

‘Other commitments. What does that mean? Is she married...does she have a family?’

‘No, she is not married and she does not have a family. If you must know, she is part way through her master’s and couldn’t take time off and that was why...’

Bobbie stopped.

‘That was why what?’ Luke asked suavely.

‘That was why I had to come on my own,’ Bobbie answered shakily, disturbed by how easily she had almost betrayed herself.

‘Had to,’ Luke repeated incisively. ‘Surely your trip could have been postponed until after her college work was finished or fitted in during her vacations.’

‘Maybe it could,’ Bobbie agreed, ‘but I wanted to come to Europe.’

‘Without your sister, your twin, even though you’ve just told me how close you are and how much you miss her? What exactly are you doing here in Haslewich, Bobbie, and why all the interest in my family?’

Bobbie drew in a sharp breath. ‘What is it exactly you’re trying to imply?’ she demanded. ‘I’m here in Haslewich because I’m working for Olivia, and as for my interest in your family...’ She paused.

‘Yes,’ Luke encouraged grimly.

‘I was just interested, that’s all,’ Bobbie fibbed weakly, giving a small shrug. ‘It’s not against the law, is it?’

To her relief they were almost in Haslewich; another ten minutes or so and she would safely be back at Olivia’s.

‘That all depends, doesn’t it,’ Luke answered as he turned into the road that led to the house, ‘on what it is you’re really doing here. I know you’re lying to me, Bobbie,’ he told her as he brought the car to a stop on the drive and turned to look at her. ‘What I don’t know as yet is why you’re lying and what it is you’re trying to conceal ... what it is you’re really doing here, but I promise you that I intend to find out...’

Bobbie climbed out of the car and shut the door firmly.

‘Wasn’t that Luke’s car?’ Olivia asked as she let Bobbie in.

‘Yes, I bumped into him in Chester and he brought me home,’ Bobbie told her.

‘Oh, why didn’t he come in?’ As she looked into Bobbie’s face, she asked gently, ‘Oh dear, you two haven’t had a fight, have you?’

To her own consternation, Bobbie suffered the indignity of feeling her eyes start to fill with tears. If there was one ultimate folly in a woman of six foot plus, it was surely crying in public.

‘Oh, Bobbie, don’t worry,’ Olivia soothed her as she gave her a quick, firm hug. ‘I’m sure the two of you will soon make it up.’

‘I don’t want to make it up,’ Bobbie declared defiantly, sniffing. ‘I hate him.’

‘Oh dear,’ Olivia commiserated. ‘That bad, was it?’

‘That’s right, take it out on the weeds,’ Bobbie heard Ruth’s amused voice telling her the next day as she tugged viciously at the weeds in Olivia’s herbaceous border whilst Amelia slept peacefully in her stroller nearby.

Hot and grubby, her face flushed and her hair tousled, Bobbie hadn’t heard Ruth arrive and now she turned round, her mouth forming a startled ‘Oh’ of surprise.

‘I used to do very much the same thing when my father or brother were being particularly chauvinistic and difficult,’ Ruth confided to Bobbie as she walked across the grass towards her, ‘and I’m afraid I even used to give vent to the most undaughterly and unsisterly feelings beneath my breath, which was a most unacceptable thing for one to do in those days.’

When she saw the way Bobbie was looking at her, she explained gently, ‘You see, I grew up in an era where one was obliged to accept that one did what one’s parents, especially one’s father, thought best. His word was law. My mother was very much the old-fashioned type of wife and my father rather steRN and autocratic, very decided in his views and opinions.’

Her face clouded a little. ‘In many ways our lives were over-restricted and limited, the brief taste of freedom we were given during the war when we were needed all too swiftly snatched away again once our usefulness was over, and yet I suspect there was a certain security in knowing what was expected of us.

‘Luke, I know, can seem rather autocratic and severe at times. Like all of us, Luke, too, has suffered from being a victim of this family’s overriding need to prove themselves worthy of being a Crighton. It’s a handicap that has been passed down from generation to generation, from father to son, as the virtues and achievements of past Crightons are extolled from babyhood almost and the growing child informed that it is his duty to prove himself worthy of following in the same footsteps.

‘Fortunately things are changing. Jon’s children, while they all are determined to take up the law as a career, are also resilient and have a sense of independence, of self-worth, a belief in themselves, which hopefully will free them from the expectations that controlled earlier generations’ lives. Apart from Max, who unfortunately is cast in a very different mold... Perhaps marriage to Madeleine will change him. I hope so for her sake.’

‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Bobbie asked her uncertainly.

‘Why?’ Ruth tilted her head on one side and studied Bobbie for a moment. ‘Perhaps because I like you and I hate to see you looking so unhappy. Luke may not be perfect but I do believe that the handicaps that come with being a Crighton could be very much alleviated in him, given the right encouragement. It isn’t always easy to say why we should be so instantly drawn to one person and not to another,’ Ruth added gently.

‘In fact, for most of us, it’s very hard to accept, never mind admit, that we have such feelings, that we’re capable of such instant and illogical, emotio

nal reactions. Why I should be so specifically drawn to you, Bobbie, I can’t say. All I can say is that I am, in much the same way that out of all my great-nieces and nephews, Joss and this young lady here have a special place in my heart. It doesn’t mean that I love the others any the less, merely that I love these two just that little bit more. How is your mother by the way?’